Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan has resigned hours before a party room vote she was expected to lose, with Deputy Premier Ben Carroll set to be elected unopposed as the state’s 50th premier four months out from the November election. That is according to her resignation statement, issued on Tuesday morning, a day after a cross-factional delegation, including six ministers, told Allan she had lost the majority support of the caucus.
“I have made the difficult decision to step aside,” Allan said, having refused to quit on Monday and vowed to contest any ballot. Her statement confirmed that Carroll would carry her congratulations and unqualified support should the caucus elect him.
“Right now my focus is on talking to my colleagues,” Carroll said as he entered Parliament House on Tuesday, with the Education Minister drawn from Labor’s smaller right faction. An uncontested succession would spare the party a weeks-long ballot of MPs and rank-and-file members unless another candidate nominates.
Allan leaves as the premier who presided over the closure of Victoria’s native forest industry, with harvesting in state forests ending on 1 January 2024, 96 days after she was sworn in. The deadline was set under her predecessor, with Daniel Andrews bringing the 2030 phase-out forward by six years in May 2023, months before his own resignation handed Allan the job.
Winding up the state’s forest manager followed within months, with VicForests ceasing to exist on 30 June 2024 and its remaining staff absorbed into the bureaucracy. The government has committed A$1.5 billion to supporting workers and timber communities through the transition.
“This mill closure is the glaring outcome of an ad-hoc decision by the government,” Timber Towns Victoria President Karen Stephens said in February, after the historic Swifts Creek sawmill closed in East Gippsland. A 2021 report commissioned by the Wellington and East Gippsland shires put the ban’s cost at 1,110 jobs and a $308 million drop in regional economic output.
It comes as a Four Corners investigation found in June that taxpayer-backed Victorian mills were processing Tasmanian native forest timber shipped across Bass Strait, with Allan rejecting suggestions her state had moved harvesting pressure onto its neighbour.
Criticism has also come from inside the science, with Dr John Raison, the CSIRO’s former chief research scientist, finding that the Andrews and Allan governments relied on studies that overestimated the carbon benefits of ceasing native harvesting.
Pressures well beyond forestry ended her leadership, with Labor’s polling collapsing as One Nation’s vote climbed and frustration mounting over crime and living costs. Corruption revelations across the Big Build brought the sharpest attacks, with lawyer Geoffrey Watson estimating that misconduct had cost taxpayers $15 billion, while Allan refused calls for a royal commission.
“He’s going to be completely open to the attack of the same horse, different jockey,” Redbridge pollster Tony Barry said of the task now facing Carroll without a reshuffle and a policy reset. Should the caucus confirm him on Tuesday, Carroll will lead a 12-year-old government to the 28 November election as the third Labor premier in three years to defend the decision that closed native forestry.
